Raquel Salas Rivera is the 2018-19 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia. Their work has appeared in journals such as the the Journal of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, PEN Poetry Series and McSweeney’s. From 2016-2018, they were co-editor of The Wanderer and co-editor of Puerto Rico en mi corazón, a collection of bilingual broadsides of contemporary Puerto Rican poets. They have received fellowships and residencies from the Sundance Institute, the Kimmel Center for Performing Arts, the Arizona Poetry Center, and CantoMundo.

In 2018, they became the inaugural recipient of the Ambroggio Prize from the Academy of American Poets for their book x/ex/exis. They are also the author of six chapbooks and five full-length poetry books. Their fourth book, lo terciario/the tertiary, was on the 2018 National Book Award Longlist, and was selected by Remezcla, Entropy, Literary Hub, mitú, Book Riot, and Publishers Weekly as one of the best poetry books of 2018.

In 2019, Birds, LLC published their fifth book, while they sleep (under the bed is another country), which includes images created by the Puerto Rican artist Mariana Ramos Ortiz.